As of today, there are industrial systems capable of separating hydrocarbons and water. The appearance of these two compounds in the fuel tanks of maritime vehicles, during their storage on land, their transport in viaducts or as the result of chemical processes, is very common and the detection thereof has been a subject of study for decades. The need to separate them by means of electromechanical devices is less common, but, nonetheless, it is a problem that has led to the implementation of different systems and methods based on multiple physical principles. They are normally associated with their immiscibility, buoyancy and density difference, for which reason they use gravitational or centrifugal principles. In some cases, in order to determine the level of each component, magnitudes associated with the electric capacity and permittivity, etc., are measured.
The size of the instruments, the precision thereof and the range of working pressures whereat they operate are critical limitations when using these systems in micro-pilot- or laboratory-scale processing plants, where large system dead volumes are detected and it is necessary to work at high pressures.
Spanish invention patent ES2249139 discloses a capacitive-level sensor device designed to separate two phases, a liquid phase and a gaseous phase; this device has the disadvantage that it is equipped with only one isolated probe and only separates a liquid phase from a gaseous phase with a measurement level precision of up to 100 μm.
Focusing on the current state of the technology available for application to the type of systems discussed, with a total volume of a few cm3, we may state that there is no system in the market designed to separate gases, hydrocarbons and water which may satisfactorily resolve these problems given the size specifications required for a continuous-operation micro-scale laboratory equipment or reactor.